VARIATION IN SENSORY CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE: AN INVESTIGATION INVOLVING THE SORTING OF ODOR STIMULI

Abstract

ABSTRACT Judges sorted forty‐three odor stimuli into groupings of conceptual similarity, repeating the task over several sessions. There was little between‐judges consistency in conceptual structure inferred from the sorting patterns and little within‐judges consistency over sessions. The latter suggests that ‘one time’ sorting experiments would give different results on repetition. In a second experiment, the effect of prior categorization experience on subsequent categorical learning was examined. Naive judges and judges from the first study performed further sortings to see whether they could be induced to sort into a chosen set of perfumery categories. Various cues were given: category names, exemplar stimuli, numbers of stimuli within each category and finally the ‘correct’ answers. Increasing the cues increased the tendency to sort according to the a priori plan but complete success was not achieved. Judges who had previously sorted the stimuli according to their own conceptual structure, found the a priori perfumery structure harder to learn than naive judges.